vacation wildflowers

I've been away the past week. Any guesses where from the local wildflowers?








I suppose you can't really tell where I was from the wildflowers, so here's a scenic photo:



This may have been one of the cooler locations around the Northern hemisphere this past week. Even so, it was warm here. The glaciers are suffering from the heat.

quick pickles

Last year at the end of gardening season, my husband and I visited one of our favorite restaurants; The East Coast Grill in Cambridge MA.

The always serve fantastic pickles made from all sorts of vegetables, carrots, beets, peppers, broccoli, cauliflower, and cucumbers, as an appetizer. They were so tasty I ordered a copy of the book from Amazon when I got home.

I think its time to start making pickles!

what is this?

We saw many of these beautiful flowers in Vermont on our recent vacation and couldn't figure out what it is. Looks like a wild rose or a berry bramble maybe, but with five lobed, maple-like leaves. I'm hoping someone can ID it for me. Thanks in advance!

cheers to cucumber season!

My first cukes are in. Yippy! I love to make cucumber martinis. Of course, they're nice in salads too. My earliest varieties are blocky white North Carolina pickling cucumbers and Burpee's Sweet Success.

This year I am growing my cucumbers (and melons) on trellises in my cold frame (with covers removed). I have an automatic sprinkler set up to give them 10 minutes of water every evening. They seem to like this.

harvest

This week's newsletter from a local farm says that they are having an unprecedented summer squash and cucumber glut! Great. Its perfect weather for these.

They also say their melons, eggplant and corn are also doing great in this weather and are looking forward to good harvests of these. Me too!

But the hot weather hasn't been good for lettuce and fall plantings of broccoli-related crops. Same here. I hope my recently sowed fall broccoli and lettuces will sprout.

wild garlic

This year, the fields near our community garden are filled with wild garlic. Much more than previous years. There seem to be two different varieties, one with a larger flower (photos above) and the other smaller (photo below).

I am assuming its wild garlic. It has small heads with 3 or 4 cloves, like garden garlic. Much of the wild garlic photos I see on line are a pretty white flowered variety with wide flat leaves. This is quite different.

garlic harvest

This week I finished harvesting my garlic. I harvested half of it (New York White and Susanville softneck, plus some hardneck varieties I saved from past years) two weeks ago (July 2). July 10, I pulled the giant cloves of German Extra Hardy and Duganski hardneck varieties. A fantastic harvest!

I have enjoyed reading a book called "The Complete Book of Garlic" by Ted Meredith to learn about when to harvest garlic. Its a very informative book that the published sent to me to review.

The ideal seems to be to harvest garlic when 5 green leaves remain and the rest are brown. I mostly did this, but still several were more mature and some less.

As the book describes, since garlic leaves start at the base of the bulb, they are also the bulb wrappers. A green leaf means an intact wrapper, and a brown leaf means that wrapper has degraded. If there are no green leaves left, the bulb has no wrapper and the cloves are exposed and will not store well. Too many green leaves and the bulb has not reached full size and flavor (but is still great to eat as green garlic).

There's also a nice comment earlier on my blog from Patrick about harvesting garlic. He says, "Garlic can be pulled and eaten almost anytime! I start in the spring, when it's the size of spring onions and keep harvesting every few weeks. When it's too young to harvest the roots, you can harvest the greens. In this way you have fresh garlic almost all year round."

I am also excited about the extra space I have in my garden now that the garlic is pulled. I planted a bunch of seeds yesterday: soybeans, several lettuce variates, mixed greens and broccoli. I will need to start thinking about where to plant next years crop of garlic, but it will not go in the same spot. Maybe in the corn or squash bed when they are finished.

my first ripe tomato

My first ripe tomato was today. A nice little sungold cherry. I didn't get a good photo of it. This is about 2 weeks earlier than I usually get my first tomato.

tomatoes

Here are some other photos of tomatoes plants that I took at our community garden. With this hot dry weather, mulch helps. I like the paper shreds someone is using. In the second photo, strings are tied to the base of the plant.

tomato supports - where to tie the twine

I'm not really sure where the bottom of the string is tied in this type of tomato support, which I am using for the second year. Last year I tied to stem of the plant. This year, I tied the twine to a pole weighted down by a brick. Works well so far. Does anyone recommend another method?

My plants are tiny this year. :( Not enough sun. I won't grow tomatoes in these beds again - until a tree or two comes down.

vegetables for vacation

I made a couple of really nice vegetable dishes on vacation for a big family gathering. Above are some pretty beets. A mix of all three varieties I am growing: Chiogga, Lutz and White Detroit. I also made a big dish of fava beans (podded, sauteed, and mixed with sauteed corn and carrots) and a couple big dishes of summer squash (saute sliced Vidalia onions, then add sliced squash and saute til done).

Skippy on vacation

Skippy has been swimming and boating the past week up in Vermont! With his two buddies Bannor and Beja.

garden flowers

These are mostly flowers from Bruce's plot at the Belmont Victory Ganden. Beautiful!

my plot

These are photos of my garden plot that I took last week before I left on vacation.

baby rabbit

Upon retuning from a week of vacation I find that my garden has been found by a baby rabbit. The cutest little bunny I have seen!

I watched through the window as he hopped around in my cold frame (which is now a hot frame) and he very nicely chose the weeds to nibble on. Grasses and pigweed. He avoided the melons and cucumbers and broccoli. He didn't eat the sunflower seedlings. He did eat the two baby soy bean seedlings still in plastic trays - oh well. Now this is definitely a failed crop. I thought it was better to get this cute photo than two bushes of edamame.

I've been watching the mother rabbit, who lives under the porch next door, for most of the fall and spring. I guess she's been busy. Its unusual for us to have rabbits here in the suburbs of Boston. Seems nice to see more wildlife, so I'm happy to share with the bunny today. I'll probably be annoyed with it later and may need to add chicken wire around my fences at home like my community plot. (Where is my dog!!?? Doesn't he have some responsibility to keep out the rabbits! He'd rather swim and sit in a boat. Not really a wild life chaser.)